RATM for Christmas Number One 55Results
Described as ‘simply one of the biggest shocks in chart history’, by BBC
News entertainment reporter Colin Paterson, ‘Killing In The Name’ surged
into the Christmas number one spot with more than 500,000 downloads in
the week before Christmas, outselling McElderry’s cover of the Miley Cyrus
ballad ‘The Climb’ by more than 50,000 copies.
Speaking on the BBC Radio One chart show after the announcement of their
success, Zack de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine applauded what
he called an ‘incredible organic grassroots campaign’, and acknowledged the
‘spontaneous action taken by young people throughout the UK to topple this
very sterile pop monopoly’.
The campaign also directly raised an impressive £100,000 for the charity
Shelter by asking supporters to make a donation. Rage Against the Machine
pledged to donate profits from single sales to the same charity, which was a
fantastic result for Jon Morter’s chosen cause, and offered to put on a free UK
concert to celebrate the achievement.
In a purely commercial sense though the real beneficiary here was Sony’s
Epic music label, which had both McElderry and Rage Against the Machine on
its books. Regardless of who ended up clinching the number one spot, Sony
was guaranteed a winner.
Following the success of this campaign X Factor bosses are allegedly con-
sidering shifting the show’s schedule to earlier in the year to make sure it
doesn’t clash with the Christmas charts and elicit a similar social media
backlash next year.
Lessons
This campaign, perhaps more than any other over the past few years, demon-
strates the incredible power and reach of online social media to influence
events in the real world. It also shows what can be achieved by a small, dedi-
cated team, or even an individual, with little or no budget but plenty of drive